A Beginning

As my world continues to grow, I find it impossible to keep in touch with all of those people that I've met. Particularly those who I wish to remain close to. Like butter over too much bread, there is only so much of me. I hoped though, that in this age of technology and advancement, I might find a way to keep you all close and meet more friends in the same way. Hence, the blog.

I want to use this space to talk about the things I'm working on and reading. Ideas still half formed and polished products alike. And like poetry, I write this for myself, but to you. I hope it will be a conversation.

To get started (and explain the meaning of the title of the blog), I will quote Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which I am currently reading and loving: "In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way...when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed."

I like this quote. As a writer of sometimes magical realism or speculative fiction, this quote rings true for me in so many ways. Seeming is a way of metaphor, not actually how it was, but as close as can be imagined. In this way, seeming is sometimes even more real than the truth. More accessible, more human. Even more so, no story is what it seems. As O'Brien goes on to say, "A true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the dawn that spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen."

Maybe I'll put some of my own work on here too. I just submitted a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood to the Fairy Tale Review (for those of you who are interested). I am pleased with it as a whole. Even more though, I am proud of myself for writing and sending in a story completely out of school. Yay! The first step towards becoming an "official" writer...